


Light Carries On Endlessly (Even After Death)

by DiNovia



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cat Grant Knows Kara Danvers Is Supergirl, F/F, Press Secretary Cat Grant, Presumed Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 06:15:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13653141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiNovia/pseuds/DiNovia
Summary: Remember my family motto: Happy Endings OnlyCat, as Press Secretary, has to make an announcement to the world, one she desperately wishes weren't true.





	Light Carries On Endlessly (Even After Death)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Onehellagaykid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onehellagaykid/gifts).



> This is a birthday present for onehellagaykid, who had requested a Supercat angst story for her birthday last week. Because my Amazing Wife and I took a vow twenty years ago to only write happy endings (a vow that, coincidentally, pre-dates our wedding vows), I compromised, and the present is Angst with a Happy Ending, because I am not sleeping on the couch tonight. Or ever. ;)
> 
> My Amazing Wife, lisaof9, helped me to dial up the angst a bit, just so you know who to blame. ;)
> 
> Happy Birthday, onehellagaykid! I hope it was a good one!

**Tuesday, 0112 EST White House Situation** **Room**

Normally, Cat Grant wouldn’t be in this room in the midst of a crisis, but Olivia is in the air, her attendance at the G20 Summit cut short, and Decker, the VP, is woefully unprepared for something of this nature. He’s asked Cat to sit in with him, as an expert on National City and on Supergirl, and as proud as she is to be of use at a time like this, she also wishes she were a thousand miles away. Because the fight in National City isn’t going well. It’s not going well at all.

National City’s PD and the DEO are barely holding the line against this latest threat. Nevada and Northern California are mobilizing reinforcements, but they haven’t arrived yet - not that they’ll do much good. With multiple points of attack and weaponry that far outstrips what the DEO has, this unknown force has effectively brought National City to its knees, and Kara, try as she might, cannot be nine places at once. She’s exhausting herself. Cat can see it.

So can everyone else in the room, and the National Security Advisor is already requesting a secure connection to Metropolis when her senior assistant hands her a note.

“Metropolis reports Superman was on his way to render assistance to Supergirl and National City when a strike-force attacked a farmstead in Smallville, Kansas,” she reads. “Superman has diverted his attention there.”

“They knew he’d come,” breathes Cat. “It’s a coordinated attack, meant to keep them apart. They’re the targets-”

She barely gets the words out when there’s an explosion on screen. The flames are tinged green and seem to come from everywhere at once, abrupt and loud and massive. When the smoke clears, half of CatCo Plaza is gone, leveled by the blast. A few seconds later, the news helicopters begin reporting a complete cessation of hostile activity. In fact, there’s no sign of the attacking force at all.

The rest of the situation room collapses into their chairs, relieved. Except for Cat, her hand pressed to her throat, terror paralyzing her.

“Where is she?” she croaks out, still staring at the screen. The images show people on the ground digging survivors out of the smoldering rubble and the organization of a fledgling rescue operation, but they don’t show the one thing - the one person - Cat wants to see.

“What?” asks Decker, frowning. “Where’s who?”

“Where’s Supergirl?” she asks, her voice a shadow of its usual self, hoarse and broken.

No one answers her.

 

**Tuesday, 0431 EST White House Press Secretary’s Office**

Cat pores over every posting of the fight in National City, over every report, official and not-so-official, hoping for any news of Kara, any sighting, no matter how small.

They know more now - not much more, but enough to prove her fears correct. Another explosion had occurred in Smallville at the same time as the one in National City, killing Jonathan Kent. Superman had been in the process of rescuing his adopted mother, Martha, secreting her in his Kryptonian pod hidden in the barn when the blast went off. He reported the explosion had destroyed the farm almost in its entirety, and he suspects the attacking force was a remote-controlled contingent of weaponized drones set to detonate at a pre-arranged signal.

Sifting through the debris in both locations will take days, but Cat has no reason to doubt Superman’s assessment. She suspects the green tinge of the flames indicates each drone contained some sort of Kryptonite component, as well, meant to weaken their Kryptonian targets. She prays she’s wrong about that, realizing her hypocrisy even as she does so. She can go back to being an atheist tomorrow.

Her senior assistant, Dana - sometimes called Darla or Danielle or even "the Carol," depending on Cat’s mood - knocks on the doorframe quietly.

“The President is asking for you,” she whispers, and Cat looks up, startled by the naked worry in Dana’s eyes and how wilted she looks. It’s more than just a nineteen-hour day. It’s hopelessness.

Cat nods and tries to hide the trembling of her hands by running them through her hair and straightening her skirt. She stops in the doorway and gives Dana a weak smile. “Go home,” she tells her. “There’s nothing else we can do tonight.”

She doesn’t wait for an answer, disappearing instead down the darkened corridor.

 

**Tuesday, 0456 EST The Oval Office**

Cat enters the Oval Office with her shoulders back and her head held high. She would literally kill for a latte at the moment, but that can wait. The President comes first.

Olivia, in the midst of a whispered conversation with her National Security Advisor, looks up when Cat enters. She clears her throat and glances at the others gathered around her, all engaged in their own urgent murmured conversations.

“I need the room,” she announces, and the others - the Leo, the Toby, the Josh, the Sam - all quietly take their leave, disappearing through various doors, shutting them quietly behind themselves.

“What is it?” asks Cat. Her hackles are up like never before and Olivia is just staring at her with those unreadable Durlan eyes. “Olivia, please…”

“Cat, sit,” says Olivia, nodding at the closest couch.

Cat shakes her head. “I prefer to stand,” she says, and her words are tight and clipped, like shards of broken glass.

Olivia purses her lips and picks up a red folder before coming around her desk. She opens it up to a particular page and hands it to Cat without a word.

Cat takes it from her and begins to read the report. After the first few sentences, she shakes her head more emphatically.

“This… this can’t be true,” she whispers, blinking tears out of her eyes, looking up at her President and her friend. “Tell me this isn’t true.”

Olivia softens visibly. “I can’t, Cat,” she says, grasping Cat’s forearm and squeezing. “I’ve told them to keep searching, to keep the rescue operations open for another twenty-four hours, but we all know it’s a recovery now.” She reaches out to flip the report over, revealing a photograph of a severed hand, pale and perfect amidst rubble and ash. “The DEO has positively identified it as Supergirl’s,” she whispers, and Cat claps her hand over her mouth. She looks up at Olivia with wide, anguished eyes before dropping the folder and lurching past her toward the desk.

She finds the hidden wastebasket there and vomits into it, sinking to her knees afterward, wracked by silent sobs. Shocked by Cat’s reaction, Olivia hurries to Cat’s side, crouching down beside her, drawing her into her arms.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she cries, realizing her mistake too late. This is not the loss of a friend, this is something much, much more, and Olivia had no idea.

Cat clutches at Olivia, tears streaming down her face, mascara ruined, looking older and more vulnerable than Olivia has ever seen her before. “I’ve never told anyone,” she admits. “Not even her.”

 

**Tuesday, 1313 EST White House Press Secretary’s Office**

Dana’s desk and the outer office are empty.

Cat threatened to have her erstwhile assistant escorted home by the Secret Service if she didn’t leave of her own accord, so Dana went, “under protest” she said, claiming she would be back in time for the 4pm briefing.

Cat’s relieved to be rid of her, even for a few hours, because as touched as she is by Dana’s concern, being fussed over by the girl, with her sad little frown and her earnest brown eyes, is too much like Kara, hauntingly so, and Cat’s heart is flayed open enough as it is.

She’s already had a call from Carter, on vacation with his father in Hawaii. It went… badly.

She tried to give him the “official” report - the search still underway, hope for a rescue - but he saw right through it.

 _“She’s not gone!”_ he’d yelled. _“I don’t believe it! I’ll never believe it!”_

Dylan had taken the phone from him then, and Cat’s heart bled to hear her son’s sobs in the background.

 _“We’ll meet you wherever you want us to, Cat,”_ he said gently, and somehow her ex-husband’s solemn concern broke Cat even more. _“Whatever you need.”_

She’d barely been able to thank him before hanging up on him.

Now she sits in her office, computer off, laptop closed, phone face down on the mahogany surface of her desk. She stares at a space two-and-a-half feet in front of her face, mind blank, eyes empty of tears, hands curled into fists of impotent rage.

A knock on the doorframe makes Cat look up, and there stands Major Lucy Lane in her dress blues. An unexpected visitor.

“Smarter Lane?” Cat asks, confused, and her voice sounds like shit, rough and gravelly. “What are you doing here?”

“Official business,” says Lucy softly, taking a step inside the doorway. She slips an envelope out of a leather portfolio and holds it out to Cat. Visibly trembling, Cat takes it from her and opens it, removing the contents.

The first piece is a newspaper clipping from the Tribune, a color photograph of Cat standing next to Supergirl at her first official press briefing. The other is a snapshot of Cat and Carter together, taken by Kara at some holiday function or other, smudged by careless fingerprints.

“From her DEO locker,” Lucy explains. “I thought you’d want them.”

“Thank you,” says Cat, but the words are the hardest she’s ever had to say because she doesn’t want to thank Lucy at all. She wants to chase her from the room, screaming at her, unleashing her rage and grief in all its dark, violent glory at last. How dare she bring these things? How dare she force Cat to face a reality she desperately wants to avoid?

“There’s more,” says Lucy, and Cat closes her eyes because of course there is.

“She left letters for her family… and for you.” Cat opens her eyes, and Lucy hands her a sealed manila envelope. “In case she ever…”

Lucy swallows and Cat finally sees the tears in her eyes. She says nothing because she can’t. She knows she’ll fall apart if she tries, so she just sits there, holding the envelope aloft, staring at Lucy blankly.

“I’m so sorry, Cat,” says Lucy, and she ducks her head as she leaves.

When she’s alone again, Cat lowers the envelope to her desk and slips a perfectly manicured nail under the flap to open it. Inside is a single sheet of exquisite parchment paper, a letter, written in Kara’s neat handwriting. Cat has to look at it sideways for a long time before she can read it. The lump in her throat burns.

 

> _Dear Cat,_
> 
> _If you’re reading this, it means I failed. Not at fighting whatever killed me. I’m not afraid of death and I know the risks of being National City’s protector. I took them on of my own free will, and long ago made my peace with the probability of an untimely death._
> 
> _No, if you’re reading this, it means I failed you._
> 
> _Once, Kal told me he had a secret superpower that helps him when the odds are against him. It’s his feelings for the woman he loves, and he said they protect him, make him fight harder, make him endure one minute longer, then another, then another, even when he feels like he can’t. He told me the woman knows how he feels, and loves him back just as much, and that helps him fight to come home to her. He said it’s made the difference too many times to be a coincidence. He thought he was telling me something I didn’t know._
> 
> _But I knew it. I’ve known it for such a long time now. The problem is, I’m too afraid to tell you how I feel about you. I keep telling myself “Someday, you’ll get up enough nerve to say it,” but I never do. If you’re reading this now, I never did, and I’m sorry. Not for loving you, because I could never be sorry for that. But for not telling you._
> 
> _Seems I’m still struggling in some ways - am maybe less astonishing than you believe me to be._
> 
> _My mother gave me the necklace just before I left Krypton. It gave me strength every day in the Phantom Zone, alone and adrift, and it gave me strength here on Earth when I was trying to find my way. I stopped wearing it when I found you, Cat, because you became my strength. Will you keep it safe for me - maybe let it give you a little of the strength you always gave to me?_
> 
> _Tell Carter I’m proud of him, will always be proud of him. Tell him I’m sorry I couldn’t say good-bye in person. He’ll understand someday._
> 
> _It’s always been you, Cat. No one else has ever come close._
> 
> _I will always love you._
> 
> _I only hope the next time we meet, wherever that may be, I won’t be the coward I am today._
> 
> _Yours,_
> 
> _Kara_

When she’s finished reading, Cat upends the envelope and a teardrop pendant on a chain drops into her hand. Cat closes her fingers around it, lays her head on her desk, and cries, whispering one word.

“Kara…”

 

**Thursday, 0758 EST James S. Brady Press Briefing Room**

It’s done now. All that’s left is for Cat to make the official announcement and Supergirl, National City’s protector, is no more. Cat feels nothing. Her heart is a dead thing in her chest, and Kara’s pendant hangs heavy and cold around her neck, hidden under the neckline of her conservative, black dress.

She’ll go to the service in National City. She’ll stand there with Carter, holding his hand with a death grip, using what’s left of her strength to endure, to ruthlessly swallow back her tears. She’ll say the right words at the right time - to Alex, to Eliza, to her son - and then she’ll resign, quietly, from this job she hates, this job she can no longer abide.

It turns out Kara wasn’t the only coward, and Olivia had offered Cat a convenient refuge at just the right time.

Cat grips the podium at the head of the press briefing room with white knuckles and waits for the photographers as they jostle each other for position along the sides of the small auditorium. It’s a full house this morning, but there’s none of the usual chatter and everyone is wearing something muted and somber, as if already at a funeral.

She watches the digital clock at the end of the room tick over to 0800 and she clears her throat, looking down at notes she doesn’t need.

“Two hours ago, at 0600 Eastern Standard Time, the National Guard and other federal agencies ended the search and rescue operation in National City and the surrounding area,” she begins, foregoing her usual greeting. There are no more good mornings. “The operation is now one of recovery, to bring her body home.”

She looks at the press in their blue seats, makes eye contact with journalists she has known for years, some for decades, and feels tears well in her eyes.

“Supergirl is dead,” she says, and her voice betrays her, breaking on the last word.

Stunned and paralyzed, nobody notices the northern double doors open, then close again. There are muffled sobs in the gallery, but no one speaks.

Finally, Maggie Haberman from The New York Times finds the courage to ask the question that’s on the tips of everyone’s tongues.

“Has that been confirmed by anyone, Cat?” she asks.

Cat looks at her bleakly and nods. “An agency has recovered partial remains, and they have been identified as Supergirl’s via DNA testing.”

The clicks of a dozen camera shutters firing, again and again, are the only sound in the room.

“What happens now?” asks Kristen Welker of NBC, and just as Cat opens her mouth to answer, another voice interrupts.

“I guess now I have to notify some agencies of a new power I’ve discovered,” says Supergirl, and she shoulders her way through the line of photographers in the aisle.

Everything in the press briefing room stops, and Cat Grant, Press Secretary to President Olivia Marsdin, stands behind the podium, plate-eyed, with her hand pressed to her throat. She opens her mouth to speak, but cannot manage a single sound. Then her eyes roll back in her head and she drops like a stone.

Kara reaches Cat before she can hit the floor. The room explodes in chaos around her, with Secret Service lurching forward to render aid, photographers jockeying for the perfect angle, and journalists surging out of their seats, shouting questions at Supergirl.

“I’ll answer your questions later,” she snaps, quieting them. She looks down at Cat in her arms. Right now, only one thing matters.

 

**Thursday, 0811 EST Empty Press Staff Offices across the Hall**

Kara lays Cat on the musty, beat-up couch in the outer vestibule of the empty press staff offices, a huddle of Secret Service agents around her, some of them on their phones reporting to their superiors, some of them trying to organize medical assistance for Cat. Kara ignores them all and cradles Cat gently, running her fingers through Cat’s flaxen hair. She can't stop smiling.

“Cat,” she says, leaning close to whisper in Cat’s ear. “Cat, please wake up.”

Hazel eyes flutter open, and then widen, taking their time to focus. Then Cat lifts one hand, cupping Kara’s cheek.

“Am I dreaming?” she asks, and the question is so small, so heartbroken, Kara rushes to reassure her.

“No. No, Cat,” she says, covering Cat’s hand with her own and guiding it downward, clutching it to her chest. “I’m real. I’m okay. You’re not dreaming.”

“But your hand,” breathes Cat, and Kara looks over her shoulder at the Secret Service agents still milling about unhelpfully.

Cat’s eyes follow Kara’s gaze, and then flash with annoyance. “Attention,” she says, addressing the room in a no-nonsense tone. “Everyone not wearing a cape, GET. OUT.”

The Secret Service blink at each other for a moment, then file out, muttering to themselves. Kara chuckles as they leave.

“Your hand,” repeats Cat, voice flat and stern. “I read the report myself, Kara.”

“And every word of it was true. The hand they found was mine, severed in the explosion. I was in the process of throwing one of the drones when it detonated.” She releases Cat’s hand and looks at her own with wonder, wiggling the fingers experimentally. “This one sorta... grew back.”

Cat sits up a little and looks dubiously at the hand in question. “You didn’t know it could do that?”

Kara shakes her head, her long curls swishing across her shoulders. “It’s never come up before.” She grimaces and adds, “It… uh… it wasn’t pretty. At least the part I saw. I was unconscious for most of it.”

Cat sits up further and frowns, running her hands over Kara’s arms, searching her for other injuries. “We thought you were dead,” she whispers. “Your sister, your foster mother - do they know? Kara, what are you doing here? You should be with them-”

“They know,” she says. “I promise they know. I had to come here first. They understood why.”

Cat’s heart, once dead and cold, suddenly roars to life again, thunderingly loud.

“Why?” she breathes, reaching for the necklace she hasn’t taken off in two days, tugging at the chain.

Kara blushes and looks away. “If you’re wearing the necklace, you know why,” she whispers. “You read my letter.”

Cat crooks her index finger under Kara’s chin and lifts until she can see Kara’s bluer-than-blue eyes again.

“Tell me anyway,” she says softly. “Be brave for both of us.”

Lost in shifting shades of green-hazel-gold, Kara lets the words tumble out of her.

“I love you, Cat. I’ve always loved you. Even if you don’t feel the same, I-”

Cat stops Kara’s rambling the only way she knows how: with a kiss, fierce, and desperate, and deep. When they finally part, Cat’s fingers are wound in Kara’s long hair, and she sighs, opening guilty eyes.

“Clearly, you weren’t the only one of us who was afraid to say what she was feeling, Kara,” she confesses. “Look at me. I took a ridiculous position half the world away just to put distance - actual physical distance - between us.” Cat threads her fingers through Kara’s hair. “I thought that would help make what I was feeling more bearable.”

“Did it?”

Cat shakes her head. “Not in the slightest,” she whispers, leaning in to taste Kara’s lips again. “You’re an ache that never fades, darling. It only took me three thousand miles and three-quarters of a year to figure that out.” She rolls her eyes. “Not my best showing, but I’ll manage to live with it somehow.”

“Come home,” Kara blurts, like the words have been on her tongue this entire time, waiting to burst forth. “I know half of CatCo Plaza is gone, and it’s not even yours anymore, but you’ll buy it back and I’ll help you rebuild it, a brick at a time if I have to. Whatever you want. Whatever you need. Just come home with me.”

“Oh, Kara,” says Cat, shaking her head indulgently, a soft smile tugging at her lips. “CatCo Plaza isn’t my home anymore.” When Kara’s face crumples, Cat takes it into both of her hands and runs her thumbs along Kara's cheekbones.

“You are,” she tells her, and the light in Kara’s eyes at those words rivals a thousand yellow suns.

_fin_


End file.
